Tag Archives: Washington

September 16, 2020 · 7:02 pm

Paradise Lost

 

We saw the photographs and footage like everyone else. Forests in red blazes, orange skies over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a mustard gas like atmosphere on the ground in Los Angeles. Runaway wildfires working their way up the coast, California, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington.

In the San Juan Islands, just off beautiful B.C. Canada, we were sailing along under blue skies for a time, feeling grateful. That was last week.

This week the smoke is in our hair, on our clothes, in our eyes, in every breath we take. All we can taste is smoke and it tastes like cotton/wool/flannel. No, it tastes like fleece. Smoke strips everything of color, rendering it flattened and forlorn. Smoke silences our forests.

We should have known it was coming. One evening last week we felt a course wind, “like a Santa Anna,” my husband noted. One by one the birds left the island, taking their songs with them. The only birds I see now are Resident Canadian Geese and Northwestern or American Crows. Resident Canadian Geese are born here, don’t migrate, and have lost all instinct to fly off. And crows, like cockroaches or coyotes, are scavengers, poking through paper plates and napkins left on outdoor restaurant dining tables.

Basically, birds live on the edge. Because of their highly sensitive respiratory system, caged canaries were at one time carried down into coal mines to detect any dangerous gases, such as carbon monoxide. If the canary died, miners would flee the mine. But we can’t climb out of this. Planet Earth is our home, and air quality has no borders. It’s like the ocean.

We’re all living on the edge.

A few years ago a woman I know from Houston, Texas visited Seattle. She couldn’t wait to leave, it was too green for her. “When you’ve seen one pine tree, you’ve seen them all,” was her refrain. Never mind that our forests in The Pacific Northwest are comprised of Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, Western Red Cedar, and Sitka Spruce as well as Ponderosa Pine. They were all the same to her. And they all do their job in being one of the great “lungs” on earth—keeping places like Houston alive.

We cannot afford to lose our forests if we’re going to keep our planet pumping. Climate denialism will never replace lost lives, homes, towns, forests, wild animals, beloved pets, and birds overcome by heat and smoke. What’s in the smoke? My friend, Jeff Smith, retired RN in San Francisco tells us, “Smoke is not just particles—it is all the substances that are burning. It is gases and plastics and pesticides and toxic metals and flame retardants. These get attached to the particles and we breath them in. And we absorb them through our skin… and we ingest them.”

No one survives smoke plumes upwards of 10 miles high containing thunderstorms, lightening, and tornados. Unprecedented drought, soaring heat and strong winds fueled these flames. Meanwhile snowpacks have been shrinking in the mountains just as oceans have warmed.

Mother Nature is pissed.

As Governor of California Gavin Newson put it, “The debate is over on climate change. Just come to the state of California.” Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and British Columbia, Canada, I might add.

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August 12, 2020 · 7:10 pm

The Outdoor Rooms in Our Lives

BY KIMBERLY MAYER

Some of us consider our outdoor space essential to our survival, but really we’re just fortunate. If windowsills were all I had I’d be growing something on that, and that would be my story. But as it is, I am dealing with a deck, an upper deck. And a deck, I dare say, is different than a patio in terms of what it wants.

The deck below knew just what to do. It’s appointed with half a dozen Adirondack chairs, cedar stump tables, lifejackets of every size hanging on a rack, and a bevy of water shoes, boots, and waders in a cubby. Considering where we are and what we’re about, it’s perfect.

The top deck, my concern here, steps off our open space living/dining/kitchen, and is currently furnished with all the traditional black wrought iron furniture that moved in with us from other homes. And they just don’t work in this cedar shake house in-the-woods-by-the-sea.

I purchased many of these pieces by visiting consignment stores along The Main Line outside Philadelphia in the two years we lived there. We were living in an old stone farmhouse at the time, and for the Pennsylvania Bluestone patio I picked up assorted wrought iron pieces, mismatched sets, in various colors. Sanded them all and gave them a coat of flat black Rustoleum. It worked. The furniture looked like it been with the house for all time. We felt remarkably settled on that patio in Bryn Mawr, in the evenings mainly as the summers were so warm. Canapies and cocktails, the sound of cicadas, and fireflies dancing across the lawn until it was time for bed.

Then we moved west and I didn’t know what else to do but load all my patio furniture into the moving van. It took awhile but finally, six years later, the traditional wrought iron looked well appointed again on the patio of a small English Tudor on Queen Anne hill in Seattle. Every square inch in a walled city garden is precious. The cushions were upholstered in a black & white awning stripe, and a dining table, chairs, and a candelabra, all in black, were added to the collection. Our outdoor room was a green oasis where climbing hydrangea scaled the walls under a pair of magnolia trees, all very reminiscent of New Orleans, Paris, or Nob Hill in Boston.

From there we moved out to The San Juan Islands and all the wrought iron pieces came with me again, and they shouldn’t have. If furniture could talk they would have told me this.

Now here we are, on an island where the trees meet the sea eleven nautical miles off the state of Washington mainland, and north of Victoria, B.C. Both rustic and remote, we couldn’t fantasize New Orleans, Nob Hill, Paris, or even Queen Anne, if we wanted to. The uptown girl furniture was made for patios, and patios, by nature, are turned inward. A patio is social. Upon the decks, we are always turned out. We listen to birdsong and our gaze is far. Like the running boards of the deck our line of sight extends to the sea, the stretch of beach, the coastal shrubs, the stance of heron, the flight of the osprey, and the rising moon. This land, this sea, this sky, becomes us.

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May 23, 2017 · 6:05 pm

The Things that Disappear

Taylor Shellfish Farms, Bow WA

BY KIMBERLY MAYER

“The Running of the Brides” was a one-day sale of wedding gowns at Filene’s Basement, a tradition at the downtown flagship Boston store from 1947 until the store finally closed in 2007. Gowns that retailed for thousands of dollars were on sale in the hundreds. Brides-to-be stormed the store with posses of fast running, bartering and trading friends, sisters, and mothers. As at Chicago’s commodities market, bells were rung and whistles blown to locate each other on the floor. Stepping into and hoisting out of gowns in the aisles, brides-to-be emptied the racks.

Another annual event this time of year is the Oyster Seed Sale at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Bow, Washington. In order to be in line at dawn with other oyster farmers, many from our own bay on San Juan Island, we had to ferry over the day before and spend the night. There we always purchase several bags of Pacific Triploids, Pacific Diploids, Kumamoto, and Olympia Oysters seeds. Gone like the bridal gowns, with everyone hurrying home to get their seeds back in the water at low tide.

After months of preparation, this year’s Master Gardener Plant Sale on San Juan Island was nearly over in thirty-five minutes. As the line had grown outside Mullis Senior Center before the doors opened, it’s almost safe to say one had to be in that line too for a bountiful selection of vegetable and herb seedlings.

There was just one catch: because of record cold temps, customers were advised not to plant their purchases outdoors. Not before a gradual “hardening off” to get acclimated to the outdoors. Always a good idea with vegetables grown from seedlings under cover, a one-to-two week process exposing them to a few hours of sun per day in a location sheltered from strong sun, winds, hard rain, and cold temps. Bringing them in at night, of course.

We see onions and brassica, the hardiest, going out first. Followed by celery, Chinese cabbage, lettuce, and endive in the vegetable march. Basil, tomatoes, and peppers, most tender of all, with eggplants, melons, and cucumbers preferring nighttime temperatures in the 60’s.

We’re still a ways from that this spring. In the daily procession at our home, toting vegetable plants between kitchen and deck, back and forth in what Gabe Rivera calls “a yearning to graduate to the great outdoors,” we are building horticultural armored plating in the seedlings. It’s all good. Any lingering overcast is also less stressful for plants.

These are among the things that disappear this time of year: wedding gowns, oyster seeds, and vegetable & herb starts. Just the beginning of things, really.

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